The Bass Wore Scales (The Liturgical Mysteries) Read online

  “Well, when you put it like that,” said Elaine, “it doesn’t sound too hopeful, does it?”

  “No,” said Meg, “but I like her. I liked her last year, and I like her now.”

  “Me, too,” added Georgia. “There’s no reason why we can’t have a priest that’s good for our parish. We deserve it. I’m getting on that committee. I have ways.”

  “Keep me informed,” I said. “I’m always happy to be kept in the loop. May I take you gals to lunch?”

  Bev shook her head. “Not me. I’ve got a meeting over at the church.”

  “Ah, yes,” I said. “The Parish Administrator.” The role of Parish Administrator was a relatively new position at St. Barnabas enacted by Father George so he could, in my opinion, avoid conflict altogether. Bev Greene was in charge of writing checks, scheduling the building, keeping up with pledges, handling all personnel issues (at the behest of the rector), and all sundry chores that fell under her job description as “other duties as required.” She also had to attend worship meetings.

  “You wouldn’t forget if you were still employed,” humphed Bev. “I hand out the checks.”

  “I already ate,” said Georgia, with a sigh. “I could eat again, I suppose.” She reconsidered. “Nah. Better not.”

  “That just leaves us,” I said, looking at Meg hopefully.

  “Oh, yes. I can just manage to get some lunch in before my next appointment,” Meg said.

  “When’s your next appointment?”

  “A week from yesterday.”

  * * *

  The Ginger Cat was, as always, doing brisk lunch business. Located on the north side of the square in St. Germaine, they specialized in coffee, soup on Thursdays, and a variety of upscale yuppie sandwiches on unpronounceable bread. Cynthia Johnsson was darting to-and-fro in the graceful dance of the experienced waitress. A new, college-aged waitress whom I didn’t know seemed to be struggling to keep her head above water. We sat down at a table next to the front window, and Cynthia glided by—moments later—with a couple of menus and a water pitcher in one hand, a tray with two bowls of soup and some bread in the other.

  “Be right back,” she said, putting down the menus and pouring two glasses of water, “as soon as I deliver these.”

  “Take your time,” Meg said with a smile. “We’re in no rush.” The other waitress—I suspected she was a student at Appalachian State—was standing in the middle of the restaurant, flipping back and forth through her order pad as though she was looking at lunch orders written in ancient Greek, another shell-shocked victim of the noon rush.

  “What looks good to you?” I asked Meg, as we peered over our menus.

  “I think I’m going to have a grilled Gruyere and roasted red pepper sandwich on Kalamata Olive bread.”

  “What?”

  “Don’t be snide. You heard me perfectly well. It’s the special.”

  “How about this black walnut bagel with seared tuna, Daikon sprouts and Wasabi cream cheese?”

  “Nope. I always like to have the special. It’s good for my self-esteem. ‘I’ll have the special,’ I say to Cynthia, and then, when she brings it, I actually feel special.”

  “Well, if that isn’t the dumbest thing I’ve ever heard.”

  “Yes it is, isn’t it,” said Meg. “But since I’m feeling special, I shall affirm you in your selection, no matter how commonplace and boring it may be.”

  I sighed and stared at the menu. I always had a problem trying to decide on a designer lunch, so I was still undecided when Cynthia hurried up to the table and asked if we were ready to order.

  “I’ll have the special,” said Meg, closing her menu and handing it to Cynthia. “And a glass of ginger-peach iced tea.” Cynthia nodded and looked in my direction.

  “I’ll have the egg sandwich,” I said, finally seeing something that I recognized.

  “That comes with Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese and Crimini mushrooms,” Cynthia said.

  “Okay.”

  “Would you like that on Asiago Cheese bread?”

  “Great,” I said.

  “Perhaps with a side of cranberry compote?”

  “Now, look here…”

  “Never mind,” she giggled. “I’ll bring you a regular egg sandwich, chips and a cup of coffee.”

  “Put some snooty mayonnaise on that, will you?” I called after her.

  * * *

  We were finishing our lunch just as Ruby, Meg’s mother, walked in the front door of The Ginger Cat. She spotted us right away, or, more probably, spotted us from the street since our placement in the front window was more than a little conspicuous.

  “I thought you might be here,” said Ruby. “I tried calling your cell phone, but you didn’t answer.”

  “I have it turned off,” said Meg. “It’s my lunch hour.”

  “Well, I have two messages for you. Actually, one for you and one for Hayden.”

  Meg and I looked up at her expectantly.

  “But first,” Ruby said, sitting down in one of the two vacant chairs at our table, “how about a little dessert?”

  “Sounds good to me,” I agreed.

  “I’ll skip it this time,” said Meg.

  Cynthia, overhearing Ruby’s comments, was at our table in two shakes of a lamb’s tail with the new waitress in her wake. “I’m getting ready to leave for the day, so Lisa will take your dessert order.” She ushered Lisa, an obviously shy girl, front and center.

  “What’s on the dessert tray today?” I asked.

  “Umm,” she started, wracking her brain to bring the desserts back from memorized obscurity to the frontal lobe where she could access the information. “There’s blackberry cobbler, bread pudding, cheesecake, blackberry cobbler…”

  “You said that already,” said Ruby, having missed seeing the poor girl struggling earlier and therefore lacking the patience that Meg and I were so admirably demonstrating.

  “Let me start over,” said Lisa. “Blueberry cobbler…”

  “I thought you said ‘blackberry,’” interrupted Ruby.

  Lisa nodded and blinked hard. Twice. “Blackberry cheesecake, bread…”

  “Blackberry cobbler!” said Ruby.

  “Mother! Please!” hissed Meg.

  “What?” hissed Ruby back.

  “It’s her first day,” I whispered, hoping that it was.

  “Oh. Take your time, dear.”

  Lisa nodded and started again, this time looking at her pad. “Blackberry cobbler, bread pudding, cheesecake, key lime pie and chocolate torte.”

  “Very nice, dear,” said Ruby. “I’ll have the chocolate torte.”

  “I’ll have the bread pudding,” I said. “With rum sauce.”

  Lisa wrote down the orders as she made her way to the kitchen, bumping into only one table that seemed to leap in front of her when she wasn’t looking.

  “Poor child,” said Meg, looking over toward the door. Since we had chosen to be front and center in the window, we had as fine a view of the pedestrian traffic as they had of us, and we could see the customers just as they opened the door of the restaurant. “Elaine’s coming in.”

  “Afternoon,” said Elaine. “I couldn’t help noticing you three from the square. You look like a Piggly Wiggly window display of Country Chic.”

  “Very clever,” I said. “How long have you been working on that one?”

  “Since I saw you guys a couple of minutes ago. The first time I walked by. You were talking to that little waitress.”

  “I like it,” said Ruby. “The whole Piggly Wiggly/Country Chic thing really works.”

  “Oh, please,” I said. “Don’t encourage her. Next thing you know, she’ll think she’s a bad writer.”

  “Hey,” said Elaine. “I can write just as badly as you. I mean…I can write just as bad as you. I used to be an English teacher.”

  “Huh,” I sniffed.” I don’t think so. My writing has been panned on three continents. And, as you know, I own Raymond Chandler’s typewrite
r.”

  “Maybe,” Elaine countered, “but I made a D in creative writing in high school.”

  “I once dated a clown at a grammar rodeo.”

  “I was kicked out of my writing group for excessive run-on sentences.”

  “I shot the editor of my college yearbook just to watch him die,” I said smugly, sipping the last of my now cold coffee.

  This comment brought a startled look from Lisa, our waitress, who had just shown up at the table with an order of key lime pie and blackberry cobbler à la mode.

  “Umm,” she said. “Who had the key lime pie?”

  “Why, I did dear,” said Ruby. “Thank you so much.”

  I rattled my coffee cup on the table, indicating its non-active status, but it did no good. I was about to say something about our dessert order when I felt Meg’s foot on my shin under the table. I glared over at her, but she returned my gaze with sweet innocence.

  “It’s her first day, dear,” she said, as I looked down at my blackberry cobbler.

  “You want this?” I asked Elaine, pushing my dessert over toward the empty place. “I really wanted some bread pudding.”

  “Don’t mind if I do,” she answered, sitting down. “Could I get some coffee as well?”

  “Apparently not,” I growled. “World-wide acclaim in the field of bad writing doesn’t count for anything anymore.”

  “Oh, I could write worser stuff than you ever could write,” said Elaine.

  “To badly write is something I can well do,” said Meg, seductively splitting an infinitive twice in one sentence.

  “Me, too,” said Ruby. “Listen to this. ‘After being whipped fiercely, the cook put the cream into this key lime pie.’” She smiled. “That’s a dangling participle.”

  “Bad writing is much more than dangling participles and obese gerunds,” I said. “It’s an art form. And, by the way, splitting an infinitive, no matter how provocatively, is no longer considered a grammatical offense.”

  “How hard can it be to write a bad sentence?” asked Elaine. “I mean, if you can do it?”

  “This sounds like a challenge,” I said, looking around for Lisa who had seemingly decided that it was time to go on her break. “What’s the bet, and what are the rules?”

  “Let’s make this interesting,” said Elaine. “What’s the deadline on the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest?”

  “Officially, it’s April 15th, but they usually take submissions till June I think.”

  “What’s the Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest?” asked Ruby.

  “Ah,” said Meg, “now you’ve done it.”

  “Edward Bulwer-Lytton was the famous author who penned the immortal lines ‘It was a dark and stormy night,’” I explained. “That opening was part of a longer sentence that has been dubbed one of the worst first lines of any novel ever written—or at least published. The Bulwer-Lytton Fiction Contest asks for submissions of the worst opening line to a novel that you can come up with.”

  “What’s the prize?” Ruby asked.

  “A couple hundred bucks, I think. But it’s the prestige we’re all interested in.”

  “Have you entered before?” Elaine asked.

  “Yep. No luck though. But I haven’t entered this year, so they haven’t even seen my good stuff.”

  “Here’s the bet then. Whoever wins the B-L contest has to buy the other three supper at the Hunter’s Club.”

  “But that means that the winner is out a couple of hundred bucks,” I protested.

  “As you said,” explained Elaine, “it’s the prestige of winning that’s important. And besides, I’ll have the two hundred dollars from the prize money. I won’t be out anything.”

  “Okay,” I said. “There are a couple of sticky wickets to work through. Firstly, there are thousands of entries every year, and although there are different categories, any of us would be lucky to get a dishonorable mention, much less win. Secondly, after I do win, the pressure to give radio and newspaper interviews will be enormous. I don’t know that I’ll have the time.”

  Meg laughed. “Oh, you’ve got the time. It’s me I’m worried about. I’m too pretty to be on the radio. I’ll have to do television appearances. That means new clothes, a new hair style…it may all be just too much.”

  Ruby put her fork down on her empty plate. “Sounds like you all have the contest wrapped up. How many prizes are there?”

  “Well,” I answered, “one grand prize. Then there’s a grand runner-up as well as winners, runners-up and dishonorable mentions in each category. You know—adventure, romance, detective—that sort of thing. Then there are miscellaneous dishonorable mentions as well. Quite an assortment of honors. They’re all listed on the Bulwer-Lytton web page.”

  “Why don’t we do it this way?” said Ruby. “Whoever gets the highest award wins. Grand Prize Winner is the top, Grand Runner-Up next. Then, winner in any category. Runner-up trumps a dishonorable mention.”

  “That sounds fair,” said Meg. “Do I get a trophy as well as the two hundred dollars?”

  “Wait a minute,” said Ruby. “What about the magic typewriter? Hayden shouldn’t be allowed to use it.”

  “I should, too,” I argued.

  “I have an idea,” said Elaine. “There are three or four old manual typewriters in the basement of the church. Let’s get them out, clean them up and use those. Hayden can use his, and we’ll all be on equal footing.”

  “I still think it’s an unfair advantage,” said Ruby. “Anyway, I don’t need one. I’ve been typing on my old Remington for years.”

  “I’ll take one,” said Meg. “Do we happen to have the one that Moses used to write Leviticus?”

  “The very one,” laughed Elaine. “I’ll go and dig them out this afternoon.”

  Lisa managed to struggle back to the table and present me the bill. She’d charged us for two pieces of cheesecake and four cups of coffee. I left ten bucks on the table.

  “I’ll come back and settle up with Cynthia later,” I said. Meg nodded.

  “I almost forgot,” said Ruby. “Your messages. A man named Harris called. He wants some advice on his stock portfolio.”

  “Precisely the reason I turned off my phone,” said Meg. “He’s calling me twice a day since he opened his account.”

  “And Moosey McCollough called looking for you, Hayden. He said you were supposed to take him fishing.”

  “I am and I will,” I said. “But first I must think of the most delectishous, horriblest sentence ever constructed in the history of the English language.”

  “That’s a good start,” said Elaine. “Good luck.”

  “The game is afoot,” I replied.

  * * *

  “What about your detective story?” asked Meg, as we walked out the door of the Ginger Cat into the sunshine. “You’ve already started it. And, as I recall, our pertinacious detective is on a hot date with some floozy named Betsy.”

  “She’s not a floozy,” I said. “She’s just misunderstood.”

  “That’s what all the floozies say.”

  “I guess I’ll just have to leave them on their date until I knock out a couple of obvious winners for the competition.”

  “How many are you going to send in?”

  “At least two or three,” I said. “ I intend to win this bet.”

  Chapter 3

  Moosey McCollough was waiting for me as I walked into the police station. He was sitting on the bench in the waiting room, chomping on a Zagnut candy bar, a departure from his usual Milky Way, his legs dangling and his tattered high tops barely scuffing the linoleum. Moosey was eight but small for his age.

  “Hayden! You ready to go fishing?” he called out as he saw me open the door. “I been waitin’ all summer.”

  “Moosey, it’s only the end of May. Summer hasn’t even started yet.”

  “It has for me! School got out two days ago.”

  “How about tomorrow morning? I still have to go pick up Pete’s boat.”

&nbs
p; “Okay,” Moosey said, his mouth full of chocolate and peanuts. “What time?”

  “I’ll pick you up at six.”

  “Five,” said Moosey. “I’m usually up at five. I wake up whenever the sun comes up.”

  “Six,” I said. “Now scoot on out of here and go dig up some worms. We need about a hundred.”

  * * *

  I checked in with Dave at the station and, as usual, nothing of a felonious nature was happening in St. Germaine—nothing that we were aware of, at least. The summer crowd would start appearing in town about the second week of June as school holidays began and the heat and humidity began to exact its inexorable toll in Georgia and Florida. But, for now, all was quiet.

  I wandered down the sidewalk and made my way around the town square. The square was built around Sterling Park, named for Harrison Sterling, a mayor of St. Germaine, who in the early ‘60’s, ramrodded zoning ordinances down the city council’s gullet, resulting in the preservation of the downtown area in an era when most small towns were tearing down old buildings and putting up architectural monstrosities. Now, of course, Harrison Sterling was a hero. As the statue said, “A man of vision.”

  Since The Slab Café was in my path, and I had little else to do, I stopped in to see if Pete was busy. He wasn’t. The lunch crowd had abated, and the lone stragglers sitting at the tables didn’t look as though they’d be ordering anything else.

  “Need some lunch?” asked Pete as I came in, the bell on the door jangling behind me.

  “Nope. I had an ostentatious lunch with Meg over at the Ginger Cat. I just came in to borrow your boat.”

  Pete frowned. “You come in here telling me you just had lunch at my competition’s place and now you want to borrow my boat? You’ve got some nerve.”

  “If it makes you feel any better, I didn’t pay for it,” I offered. “The new waitress is a little ditsy.”

  “Well, that’s okay then,” said Pete. “As long as I’m not the only one comping your meals.”

  “I may have to go back and pay,” I admitted. “Meg might shame me into it.”